Exams and Assessment Overview

This webpage sets out the various forms of assessment and exams that students will undertake during their time with us at Lymm High School. The aim is to provide parents with a clear overview, so that you know when exams are taking place, what kind of things will be covered and how best to support your child with revision.

It is important to stress that the great majority of assessments are what we might call ‘low stakes’ tests. That is, whilst we expect students to take them seriously, they ought not to be causing undue stress – especially in Key Stage Three. It really is not the end of the world if a student doesn’t perform as well as they’d like in the odd test or exam.

Revision is important for many reasons: it helps students consolidate their learning; builds confidence; enables them to practise revision skills for public examinations further up the school; gets them used to sitting extended exams; and allows teachers to build a clearer picture of progress (without proper revision, it is less clear whether students have merely forgotten something or didn’t understand it in the first place). However, we do not expect KS3 students to spend more time revising than the usual recommended amount of homework time per week.

Exams at Lymm High School: an overview of the assessment year:see text below for more detail

Year Group

Regular in-class assessment

Mid-year exams

End of Year exams

Year 7

Students will have regular, summative tests about every 24 lessons or so. in test conditions, in class

Students will take mid-year exams in English and maths towards the start of January

End of year exams will take place in April/May

Year 8

Year 9

Year 10

Students have regular, on-going assessments approximately every 6-8 weeks. These will take place in class, under exam conditions and will require revision.

External GCSE English Literature Exams take place in May. Internal end of year assessments will take place under formal exam conditions, for all other subjects in June.

Year 11

Students will be assessed every 4-6 weeks on topics drawn from across the course.

Year 11 take pre- mock assessments in maths in October.

Year 11 mock exams will take place in December.

Post- mock exams in English and maths take place in March

Link to GCSE exam timetable is given here

Year 12

Regular on-going assessments are given during assessment weeks: see calendar given below under Key Stage 5